


The Ones that Mama Gives You, Don't Do Anything At All

by executrix



Category: The Playboy Club
Genre: F/F, Femslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-01
Updated: 2011-10-01
Packaged: 2017-10-24 05:15:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/259398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the Fandom Free-for-All, for karmageddon, who asked for: “Bunny Mother Carol Lynne/Alice. She’ll never have her own mother’s approval. This feels just as good, maybe better. NC-17 preferred.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ones that Mama Gives You, Don't Do Anything At All

Bunnies, like nuns or secret agents or monarchs, often take on a single new name to represent their new selves. The woman who was Krysta Slawenska to her baptismal certificate, Chrissie Beasley on her marriage certificate, Bunny Alice in the Playboy Club, where documentation mattered a lot less.

Still, there was a photographic record. Tiny Krysta carried into the church in white lace. Chrissie walking into City Hall in a Marimekko dress printed with gigantic red poppies, carrying a full five dollars’ worth of daisies. Bunny Alice, shiny in mint-green or lilac satin.

When she was hired (a process that did not generate white smoke) she picked her name because she had always loved that movie. As her husband said, there was a wacky White Rabbit in charge of things behind the mirror. Also, her older brother Franczek worked for AAAAA Towing and Repairs, so-called because it was the first one in the Yellow Pages so it caught people’s eye.

There was also a Bunny Ava (like The Chairman of the Board’s amour Ava Gardner) in the Chicago club, and it had to be first-come-first-served for Bunny Marilyn. Applications had been made to be Bunny Jackie but, on reflection, were turned down as disrespectful. There was never a Bunny Agnes, or a Bunny Gertrude or a Bunny LulaMae, even if some of the girls now swaying sexily—or tottering, take your choice—on four-inch stilettos grew up not wearing shoes in the summer. How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm, after they’ve seen The Loop?

Chrissie and Sean laid down a foundation for the drive. Sean made Bisquik pancakes and breakfast sausages in the electric skillet they got as a wedding present. Chrissie made brandy alexanders in the blender (she had that before they got married). She put on her new dress. Dark blue wool crepe, with a funnel neck and cuffs that, unless you looked really closely, looked like Persian lamb. On sale, but still from Neiman-Marcus. She pinned a paisley scarf around her neck with a circle pin.

The drive seemed to take forever—the roads and the intervening McDonald’s were bumper-to-bumper, but, like the night before one’s execution, tedium suddenly looked better than the alternative.

“We could nip this right in the bud!” Sean said. “I could tell them that I voted for Kennedy.” (Chrissie had been too young to vote.) “They’d throw us out and we could find a pay phone, tell Rick and Robby we’re coming after all. We’d miss the pate de foie gras, but we’d probably be in time for the duck a l’orange. Or at least the crepes suzettes.”

Alice lit a Winston from the butt of the last one. “I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer.”

“At least it’s not Christmas or Easter,” Sean said. “So we don’t have to get into the whole Confession thing…”

Chrissie rang a doorbell (that, assuredly, did not contain a Latin invitation to swingers), and her kid brother Stan opened the door. “Maaaa! It’s Krysta! And a guy, I guess it’s her husband,” he said. The senior Slawenskas appeared, and Sean stuck out a hand to shake his father-in-law’s. “Very pleased to meet you,” he said.

“See?” her Dad said. “I told you it was just a phase.”

“What’s a phase?” Stan asked. He had a pretty good idea, but wanted to see what his parents would say.

“And you must be Chrissie’s mom…” (Sean paused, deciding he couldn’t get away with “you must be her sister.”)

“Now look what you’ve done!” Mrs. Slawenska told her husband, and stormed out of the foyer toward the kitchen where, it was a safe prediction, something was burning.

“Take my coat, honey,” Chrissie said, and headed toward the kitchen. “Ma! You didn’t even say hello to my husband!”

“That man is no husband of yours. The man you marry in the church, that’s your husband. What is he, some kind of Jew?”

“Of course not! But, but, this is the middle of the twentieth century!”

“Not to God it isn’t,” Mrs. Slawenska said.

“So, were you in Korea?” asked Carl, Chrissie’s second-oldest sister’s husband.

“Nope, didn’t get sent overseas,” Sean said, not expatiating because his draft board had declined to induct him and, ever since, he’d felt that he was behind enemy lines in a war that he didn’t expect to end in his lifetime. They say that you plant pear trees for your children. He was planting committee meetings for five-year-old boys who couldn’t catch a ball and liked to play with girls. “How about you?”

Sean took a long pull on his can of Budweiser and tuned out of the war stories, paying just enough attention to nod on cue. Then there was football, on the seven-inch round screen in a very large cabinet. It wasn’t a household where still-useful things were thrown out, especially when there were still 14 more payments to be made on them. There was an obbligato of crashing pans and angry lowered female voices.

After play-by-plays on the Korean War and the football game, Joe, Chrissie’s second-oldest brother (who wore a shirt with “Joe” on one clavicle and “Piesznarski’s Garage” on the other) got around to noticing that Sean was wearing a suit, and asked him what he did for a living.

“Public relations,” he said, not adding, “Well, semi-public that time Donald and Kevin and Solly and I went to Fire Island.”

After the turkey and mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes with marshmallows and green beans with fried onions and kielbasa and pierogies and pumpkin pie and ice cream, somnolence descended. After the table was cleared and the dishes washed, Chrissie yawned and said, “Honey, would you get my train case from the car?” (It was brand-new, pink vinyl stamped to look like alligator, she was really proud of it.) She turned to her mother and said, “Ma, we had a long drive, I’m tired. I’m going to go to sleep now. I guess you put us in my old room?”

“Of course not. Carl and Anna have that room. They’re married in the eyes of God. I’m not going to allow that man to make a whore of you right in my own house. You can sleep on the couch. If he brought a sleeping bag, he can sleep in the attic.”

Sean drew himself up to his full height in order to tower moderately over his mother-in-law. “That’s it!” he said. “Come on, Chrissie, we’re going home. You can insult me all you want, but you do not have the right to insult my wife. Who is not a whore in any way.”

He didn’t start giggling until they got to the car, but when he saw that Chrissie was crying he squeezed her hand.

“Why does she hate me? I always tried to be a good daughter.”

“Sweetie, she doesn’t hate you. She just makes a big deal about the church thing. Now, maybe if she actually knew anything about us she’d hate us…” Seeing that this was oil on troubled oil fires, he said, “Sorry, sorry, me and my big mouth.” As a cherry on the sundae, it had started to snow fairly heavily, and Sean had to concentrate on the road as Chrissie listened to the radio.

They got home at three in the morning and, despite the Miltown she filched from her parents’ medicine cabinet, Chrissie only managed a troubled nap. At seven a.m., Chrissie called her answering service, where the girl didn’t sound happy at all about having to work on the holiday weekend. Chrissie was relieved to find a message from Carol-Lynne saying that they were busier than a one-armed paperhanger at the Club and the desperately festive keyholders were tipping like crazy.

She took a Dexedrine that all the girls bought from Bunny Carlotta, whose sister was a nurse and lifted them from the hospital—at that rate, that girl would be buying real estate a lot faster than Brenda—splashed eyedrops into her eyes, and lined the inside of her eyelids with blue to make her eyes look brighter. Then she put on her usual winged black eyeliner. Her mouth was almost too dry to spit on her cake mascara, but Sean brought her a Bloody Mary and that helped. Usually she wore something nicer to go to work, but on holidays, the rules were relaxed. So she just put on a cable-knit sweater, red plaid slacks, and Sean’s old sheepskin coat.

Chrissie came in for the lunch shift, where she tried to figure out who was there because they didn’t have a family to go to and who was there to drown the memory of the festive meal. She went home for a nap, then went back for the late shift (…which was usually her father’s shift at the plant…) because Bunny Sally’s plane back from Florida, and Bunny Kathleen’s drive from Detroit, were stymied by the snow.

Chrissie was the last one left in the dressing room, where Carol-Lynne nursed a Manhattan and tried not to nurse resentment of the girls who still had time on their side and always refused to understand that until it was too late. Chrissie was a little disappointed, because she liked the dressing room best when it was filled with other girls, they were really sweet and fun to talk to which meant it wasn’t so bad to just be able to look at them out of the corner of her eye. Next best was when she was alone, where the rack of costumes glittered like El Dorado and filled the air with a gorgeous blend of used perfume and sweaty and sometimes turned-on Girl.

Sometimes she would run her hand along the satin curves or, when she felt very bold, squeeze the crotches of the suits. They could have been girls dangling there, suddenly vanished or become invisible. Chrissie tried to remember from the Wonder Woman comics if Wonder Woman could do that. She was glad that she didn’t sport a hard-on when she got turned on, and if the men in the club could tell she was aroused, they probably thought that they were doing it to her and they’d get all flattered and give her a bigger tip.

“Thanks for coming in,” Carol-Lynne said. “You were a tremendous help. You’re a sensible girl, and a good worker. I thought you were going to your parents’, though?”

Chrissie shrugged. “Big fight. So we got in the car and came back.”

“No romantic evening at home with your husband?”

“He’s catching up on paperwork. Not much fun watching him do that. And the extra shifts help a lot with our bills. I thought you’d be with…”

Carol-Lynne shook her head. “First he had to go deliver turkeys to poor people—although there isn’t a cat’s chance in Hell they’d vote Republican even if the Machine didn’t give them turkeys…then he went out to that nice little house he bought for his parents…”

She fidgeted with one of her new earrings. They were beautiful, she loved them, they cost $200, and what everyone knew and no one said was that she would have been a lot happier with the band from one of Nick’s Cuban cigars if only he put it on the right finger.

Changing the subject but not really, Chrissie said, “I loved your set tonight! Your voice is great, and the way you style those standards is so smooth.” {{You’d be so grand in the game}} echoed in her head. “But you were dressed as a Bunny. I thought you’d wear one of your gorgeous Paris gowns.”

“Didn’t I look good?” Carol-Lynne asked, an edge in her voice.

“You looked great! Your legs are so long and pretty! But, it’s like, being a General and just wearing Sergeant’s stripes. Because doesn’t a—how do you say it, a shantung?—outrank just a regular Bunny? You have to have talent, and to be a Bunny all you need is for men to think you’re pretty.”

“Chanteuse,” Carol-Lynne said. “Shantung is a kind of heavy silk.” Chrissie wrote that down in her Word-a-Day appointment book. Carol-Lynne swept the back of her hand up past her chin. “I guess I’m just an old palooka who insists on going back into the ring, even though he’s been hit on the head one time too many.” She tapped a cigarette on her cigarette case and lit it before Chrissie could even remind herself not to light it for her. Although none of the femmes at the one bar in town where lesbians were welcome (at least when the payoffs were up-to-date and no one was running on a Clean Up Chicago platform) was anywhere near as pretty or sexy as Carol-Lynne.

“Sean lent me one of his paperbacks,” Chrissie said. “One of those hard-boiled private eye things. The hero had to knock a girl out, and when she came to, he said he was sorry and asked if he hurt her head much and she said ‘You and every other man I ever met.’”

“That’s about right,” Carol-Lynne said. “Men are…”

“Idiots,” Chrissie said. “Jackasses. They can’t see what’s right under their eyes. Or, or, once they see a girl then it’s like they go blind, and they’re so afraid they’ll trip over their own…uh…feet…that they have to go after a new girl so they can convince themselves they can see something. Well, it’s just a good thing that girls have another string to their bow.”

Carol-Lynne stared at her and blinked.

“It’s not even cheating,” Chrissie said, moving forward at three words to a pace. “Don’t worry. We can pretend it didn’t happen. If Nick found out. And even if it was, he deserves it. For hurting you. For being stupid.” She cupped Carol-Lynne’s chin in her fingers, and looked to see she wasn’t angry. Chrissie didn’t expect her to be shocked, and she wasn’t, this wasn’t her first trip to the rodeo, not when she chose to take a job surrounded by cowgirls. There was just enough of a flicker of “Yes” to make Chrissie go ahead.

Chrissie’s rule of life was that you could get any girl if you could just make her think she was pretty, so she thought it was carrying coals to Newcastle to try the same tactic on a gorgeous woman who had more brains and class in her little finger than Nick Dalton would have had in a dick the size he thought he had. She put her arm around Carol-Lynne but didn’t take her into a full embrace. She pressed her lips against Carol-Lynne’s, narrowed her lips as if she were blotting lipstick, and opened her lips. Carol-Lynne’s mouth followed hers, and Chrissie kept the kiss cool jazz, not that loud and pounding rock’n’roll stuff. {{So carefree together that it does seem a shame…}}

It would take an experienced burglar to find the safe in a darkened mansion, and to twirl the dials open and seize the treasure. With her free hand, she reached up beneath the hem of Carol-Lynne’s tweed sheath dress. She could have gotten her hand all the way in, in one move, but she stopped to feel the beautiful puff of Carol-Lynne’s thigh above the top of her stocking, neatly divided by the garters like the sections of a tangerine. This was a soft place, even on a slim woman with dancer’s legs. Chrissie waltzed Carol-Lynne back a step or two, until she was braced on the edge of the counter.

Chrissie knew girdle models like her brothers knew car models, so she knew that crotch was open, nothing in her way but a crunchy bit of French lace, delicious as a Necco wafer.

The manual called for long, manicured nails, too long for finger-fucking, so Chrissie had to content herself with squeezing and stroking until she could feel Carol-Lynne warming and softening and spreading to her fingers. Carol-Lynne slid one hand up between their bodies, hovered at the rim of Chrissie’s bodice, then dived inside, her hand a beat behind Chrissie’s.

Moving carefully, so not so much as a stitch would be popped or a thread torn, Chrissie maneuvered her hand inside Carol-Lynne’s panties. She shimmied away just enough for Carol-Lynne’s hand to fall by her side and then clutch the countertop. “It’s okay,” Chrissie whispered. “Just let me take care of you.” She turned her hand so just the pad of her thumb, and not her decorative but currently dysfunctional nails, pressed against Carol-Lynne’s clit. There wouldn’t be time to get that dress off, before someone came in or Carol-Lynne changed her mind. If the skirt had been wider, Chrissie would have dived underneath, but she thought she’d get stuck—like a monkey trapped with a fistful of nuts—if she’d tried that. Chrissie kept going until she could feel Carol-Lynne come. She gave Carol-Lynne a minute of what she probably knew would be their last-ever kiss for the rubber in her legs to firm up.

“Happy Thanksgiving!” Chrissie said brightly.

Carol-Lynne nodded, cleared her throat, and said, “I’ve got to make up the schedule for the rest of the week. You worked so hard today, why don’t you take a few hours to catch up on your beauty sleep? I can schedule you for four-to-twelve tomorrow.”

“That would be great, but I’m supposed to be Door Bunny, so I’d have to get there earlier.”

“I’ll just switch you…your schedule, with Maureen,” Carol-Lynne said. “Goodnight, then.” She turned away from Chrissie and the hall of mirrors in the dressing room. {{Snow White is fairer far than you}} she thought.

Chrissie clutched at the rack of costumes, licked her fingers, turned to the mirror, and got herself off. She took a quick shower, counted her tips for the evening, and called for Sean to drive her home. “Good night at work?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Holidays, the day after, that’s always good.”

“You should see a gay bar on Halloween,” he said. “Or, or, Christmas, or Mother’s Day. But at least on Halloween, the guys are happy.”


End file.
